Stay
by ally.enchantress
Summary: "Stay." The word echoes in his head as he drives twenty over the speed limit on the empty roads, running from the options he has just shot to hell. She'd asked him to stay. She'd asked him to stay, and he'd said no.   s8 "Annihilated". Mild language.


**Wow, I haven't done this in a while. What is this space for again? Author's note... Right. Okay then.**

**WARNINGS: Mild Language, Spoilers for season 8, ep "Annihilated"**

******STORY NOTES: For all those who have seen "Annihilated", please take note. When Elliot went to see Kathy and the kids after finding the Royces' bodies, he and Olivia believed that Lindsay Royce had killed her family. It was only later revealed that Malcolm Royce was at fault. So, in this scene, they refer to Lindsay as the guilty party because that is all they know at this moment in the episode.**

**DISCLAIMER: **** All things SVU belong to Dick Wolf. I am nothing but a poor, underpaid fan.**

"_Stay."_

The word echoes in his head as he drives twenty over the speed limit on the empty roads, running from the options he has just shot to hell. She'd asked him to stay. She'd asked him to stay, and he'd said no.

"_No, Kathy, I'm gonna head home."_

Somehow, Elliot had found the willpower to resist every single comfort that he knows would have come from sleeping with his ex-wife again. He'd thanked her for letting him visit his kids, make sure – if he's being honest – they were still alive, and he'd decided to go home.

Back to the city.

Home no longer means a house in Queens, overpopulated with children and under-populated with marital affection. Now, home means a two-bedroom apartment with an excellent view of the smoggy sky on the occasional morning he's still there when the sun rises. Home means loud horns that had taken weeks to get used to. His home consists of decent electricity, cable, showers that are as likely to be hot as they are to be cold, and a couch he sleeps on more often than the bed, which is king-sized because he likes the extra space.

But he doesn't go home. He's scared of being alone, scared of what he might do. He's not sure whether he would discover what his gun tastes like or spend an evening on the rooftop if left alone, but either option sounds far too self-destructive for his liking. As hollow and lost as he feels right now, he's more frightened of death in this moment than he thinks he ever has been before.

So instead of going home, he turns left instead of right, taking him to the place he used to go when everything was falling to shit. The place he has stopped going as of late because he's been too wrapped up in his own Armageddon to consider that she may be in the middle of one, too.

Not this time.

Tonight he has experienced the full impact of altruism. Or rather, for the first time he understands its implications. Kathy offered herself to him, and when he declined, she had looked relieved. She didn't know what had happened to make him this way. All she had known was that he was in desperate need of compassion, and like an angel she had been willing to provide it.

Except that he said no.

Because when she asked him to stay, he realized that staying would only hurt another person. And enough people have been hurt tonight.

He's already spared one person, but there's another who doesn't have someone to pull her from her nightmares, and she's sure to have them after what they've seen. He'll be damned if he can't be there for her at least once in her lifetime.

The landlord lets him in, and he ascends the stairs, already tracing the grooves in the key she'd given him so many years ago, the one he's never used before. Maybe it's selfish, but he wants to be the one to wake her up.

Hopefully she's not a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later person in the morning.

He's quiet as he pads through her apartment in the dark and slips into her bedroom. As soon as his feet cross the threshold, he feels guiltily like a voyeur. Nerves suddenly assault him, and it dawns on him that he hasn't exactly thought this through. A few moments ago, breaking into her apartment and waking her from sleep to bare his soul to her had seemed like an excellent idea. Now, he's not so sure.

First of all, they haven't been on good terms since… Well, since whenever it was that they started being on bad terms, which seems like far too long ago. In fact, given the way he's been acting lately, he is a little surprised to find that she doesn't have a life-sized poster of him hanging over a well-loved dartboard.

Maybe she left it at the firing range.

Second of all, this most certainly falls under the category of Inappropriate Contact with Partner, something he is strictly forbidden from doing both by NYPD rules and their own. Perhaps this is not in the 'contact' meaning of the word 'contact', but… whatever he's doing, it's definitely inappropriate, and she's definitely his partner, and he's definitely contacting her.

He approaches her bed and is shocked to discover that she wraps her arms around her pillow when she sleeps. She also burrows under the covers and lies on her side.

Not that it has ever been pertinent to their relationship for him to know this, but he suddenly feels as though he has been deprived of some important piece of information. He wants to know how she sleeps. He wants to know if she talks in her sleep.

She moans then, softly, squeezing the pillow tighter. "El…" she whispers before rolling over to face him, still unconscious.

One question down. He feels ever so accomplished.

Then she shifts. Languidly, her eyes blink once, twice as she breaches the realm of the living. For a moment her beautiful face is confused, but then her senses detect another presence in the room, and she turns her face to him.

"Holy shit!" she yelps, and she dives for her gun, which Elliot can only guess is concealed in the drawer of her nightstand.

Clearly, she's not a morning person.

"Liv, it's just me."

"Elliot?" The lamp flickers on, and they both squint against the assaulting brightness. She holds her Glock in a tight grip, pointed somewhere in the vicinity of his kneecaps, and he thanks God that he thought to say something.

She doesn't seem entirely ready to register him just yet, but all he can focus on is the fact that her hair is damp and softly curling around her face.

Definitely not a tip in _Survival Strategies 101_.

To draw his attention away from the wavy tresses he'd never known she possessed, she throws her other pillow at him. It hits his stomach, and he jumps.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she demands furiously, and Elliot vows never to do this again.

He lowers his eyes. "I couldn't sleep," he admits.

White teeth bite down indecisively on her lower lip. She doesn't seem to be in a forgiving mood. "Royce," she says finally. It's not a question. "You went to see your kids."

"How do you know that?"

"I know you."

He isn't entirely sure what to do with that statement, because he's not sure of its truth. If she knew him, she wouldn't have left.

Or maybe she would have. Maybe that's why she left.

"And I know you," he says, deciding to let it go. "Are you alright after tonight?"

The first thing she wants to say is that she's fine. He can see the response forming in her eyes, and he begs her not to say it. Maybe he doesn't deserve it, but he wants the truth. She seems to understand this, because she does something surprising. She admits it.

"Jennifer," she murmurs, and at last the animosity vanishes. "I can't get her out of my head."

Ah, yes. Elliot remembers that while he had the pain of finding the two dead boys, she was the one forced to stare at the little girl with a bullet hole in her forehead.

He takes the liberty of sitting down on her bed. She shifts to make room, so he assumes he's on the right track. "Same with the boys," he tells her.

"Why do you think she did it?" The question comes out of nowhere, and he's not sure if she even meant to give it voice.

"Lindsay?" Elliot is thoughtful. What is he supposed to say? What does she want him to say? He looks down at her for help, but she is shifting around to cross-legged with her pillow in her lap, and she seems to avoid his gaze. "I don't know." It's the best he can do.

"D'you think she loved them at all?" she wonders. He doesn't answer, and they lapse into silence.

Finally, she says, "Do you want to stay?"

He looks at her in surprise, and she, misinterpreting, clears her throat uncomfortably. "I mean, there are spare blankets in the closet if you wanted to take the couch…"

Elliot is suddenly aware of just how tired he is. Yawning enormously, he nods acquiescence, and she slips from the sanctity of her covers to drape blankets over the sofa. For him. Again, Elliot is experiencing the full effect of altruism, pure and utter selflessness, and he is overcome with gratitude.

He stands and picks up her other pillow, which is lying innocently on the floor, where it fell after she threw it at him. He returns to the bed and experimentally rests his head on the pillow. It smells like her. That's the first thing he registers. The last is that he really should start coming to her more often.

Olivia pads barefoot back into her bedroom to tell Elliot his makeshift bed is as ready as it's going to get. But when she sees him lying at the foot of her bed, dead to the world, she simply doesn't have the heart to wake him.

She slides beneath her covers, careful to keep her knees bent so as not to shove him off, and slowly matches his peaceful breathing. Her first thought is that this communication thing is much easier when they're both too exhausted to think straight. Her last one is that she likes him talking to her again.

She's missed it.

**Vous aimez? You like? Please review!**

**Much love,**

**~ally**


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